9Being so near to you all the time is torture, and that's not just because of your personality.
It's holding the flame in my hand and not feeling it burn. It's gripping the knife and pressing it close and still staying calm. It's looking into the abyss and daring myself to jump.
Because you are a flame, ravaging and hurting and heartless, and you are a knife, cutting and cruel and deliberate, and you are an abyss. You always have been, and I don't know why I ever thought to think you anything but.
Skulduggery Pleasant, you are a monster, and I've known that from the moment we met. You are a stone thrown into the peace of a pond, exuding ripples and unrest everywhere you go, and you are the thing that has broken my bones time and time again. I sensed it on you that first day when my uncle lay dead, at the funeral, when I was still normal, when I still had the chance to escape you. Sometimes I wish I had.
The dreams come for me at night. You know that. You've brushed them away from my skin along with the sweat and you've sung for me as if that could keep them at bay, and you've implied sympathy like all those other things you've implied and life would have been so much easier if your sins had only been those of omission.
They aren't, though, so you are printed on the insides of my eyelids in all your worst moments. My sleep isn't really sleep, because I am watching you as you truly are: flame, knife, abyss.
I should leave you. I still have time. I should be able to escape you and your concentric rings of disturbance.
Somehow, I can't bring myself to.
A/N: I don't actually mind Val/Skul. I just don't think it's necessarily cute.
~Mademise Morte, March 24, 2013.